The President's Crash Dive Towards Removal from Office

Occupy Portland Launch Rally
October 6, 2011
http://www.aflitt.com/occupyportlandoctober2011
© A. F. Litt 2011, All Rights Reserved

By my count, there are now four grounds to impeach Trump, and the fifth appears to be on its way. Our latest video explains: pic.twitter.com/K08kTMj9wj

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) April 4, 2017

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich's video outlining four or five grounds to impeach the president is interesting, and even more now, more than a month after it was first released. And what a month it has been... But even at this point, most of these points are pretty weak tea.  

However, Reich's list keeps getting longer since he first suggested the possibility of impeachment based on the emoluments clause at the time of the inauguration, and his arguments supporting each point tend to be getting stronger as more and more evidence accumulates...

It really is starting to feel like it is just a matter of time before something happens to really put President Trump's job in jeopardy, especially as the president continues to flail, wilder and wilder, with each passing week.

If the administration is brought down, it is likely that it will not be for something that's already happened, for acts already committed, but for something that may happen very soon if the the president, his staff, and his cabinet continue on their current trajectory.

It is not the time right now, yet, to be discussing impeachment, but the current investigations need to be thorough.  The nation needs these concerns to be addressed and this is a very different situation than the calls for the impeachment of the last two presidents and the actual impeachment of President Clinton before that.

Since the impeachment of President Clinton, too much time has been spent dwelling on removing the opposing party's chief executive from office.  

The proceedings against President Clinton were far more motivated by politics than by any true harm he did to the office or the country.  This is not to say that he did no wrong, lying to Congress is a serious infraction, one that should still be taken very seriously, and a reprimand was clearly in order, but to move towards actual removal from office over lying about an extramarital affair is a bit like firing a RPG at a housefly.  It does more damage than good.

Under President Bush, when the Democrats took control of Congress, there was a lot of speculation that they would follow in the GOP's footsteps and that the House would vote on Articles of Impeachment.  Again, though, this would have been motivated by politics, and any charges against the president would have been pretty well trumped up to justify such an action.

Not liking the policies and practices of the president is not grounds for impeachment or removal.

In a way, that was a very scary moment for our democracy.  If the cooler heads did not prevail with the Democrats under President Bush, after what happened with President Clinton, a precedent and tradition could have been established where impeaching the president became a basic political move when power shifted in Congress.

Such a development would have been devastating for our nation.

It is almost certain that, if the House Democrats even held a vote on impeaching President Bush, the House Republicans would have voted on impeaching President Obama.  Large sections of the base of both parties cried out for such actions towards the other party's presidents through both administrations, and such moves would have been easy red meat to throw at these constituents, but the costs to our nation would have been terrible.

It would be simple to dismiss the current calls for the impeachment of President Trump as being little more than the latest incarnation of these misguided political urges, but this is a very different situation.  True, there has been politically motivated noise about impeachment since the election, but over the last few weeks, evidence is mounting that requires investigation.

This time, there may be true "high crimes and misdemeanors" in play.  

As I mentioned earlier, I really do feel that the focus of our nation, for the moment, needs to not be on the scandalous possibilities of a potential impeachment trial, but rather on ensuring that a very thorough investigation takes place into the concerns about the Trump campaign, transition, and current administration, and yes, this includes the president himself, if the evidence demands it. 

The White House needs to support these investigations.  To do otherwise would tarnish their administration, undermine foreign policy, and, in the worst case scenario, if a cover up or obstruction of justice occurs, their fight against the investigations might the very thing that brings down the president, not whatever may or may not have happened during the campaign and transition.

Unfortunately for our country, we have a president who, in the shaky leg days of his first time ever holding public office, seems too focused on ego and paranoia, and if he continues on the course he is on, it seems very likely that he will overreach at some point in a way that will transcend partisan party politics and lead to a bi-partisan vote on Articles of Impeachment.

The White House needs to bring in some experienced grown-ups to help them through this, someone needs to get the president off of Twitter, and the administration's political opponents need to calm down and focus on pushing for impartial investigations, including a Special Prosecutor, rather than getting lost in partisan hot flashes about throwing their nemesis out of office.

Politically, removing the president would accomplish very little for the Democrats and the Left. The next two men in succession are actually further to the right than President Trump is, and will be devastatingly more effective at pursuing their agendas than the current White House has been through the first 100-plus days of his term.

For the Democrats and the Left, the best result here they could ever dream of would be the president remaining in office after potentially burning almost all of the support from the rest of his party, support which was, at best, tenuous from the start.  It's the Lame Duck result. Even if the president was able to re-build his support over time, it would disable and disarm him for a significant chunk of his first term, and it would invite strong primary challenges against his nomination for a second term.

With the current polarity in our nation, the lack of trust towards the press, and the rise of "alternative facts," asking either side to set aside politics right now is probably an exercise in futility, but it is what is truly needed over the coming weeks. The Left needs to quit screaming for the president's head, the Right needs to quit screaming that it is all "fake news," and all sides, including the White House, need to work together to put these concerns behind us.

At this point, the need for a Special Prosecutor seems evident.  Before the firing of FBI Director Comey, maybe not, but after, it is probably the only way to start restoring trust.

When the results of these investigations are in, then it will be up to everyone to determine whether or not President Trump should remain in office.  Both the House and the Trump Cabinet will need to look at those results, because, depending on the president's behavior between now and then, it may fall upon his own administration to seek his removal from office through Section IV of the 25th Amendment. 

By my count, there are now four grounds to impeach Trump, and the fifth appears to be on its way. Our latest video explains: pic.twitter.com/K08kTMj9wj

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) April 4, 2017

I’m Calling It: The Death of Politics in America

Obviously, this blog is pretty much dead.

I've been trying to find the desire to write a “closing” post for a long time now, but even just doing that felt exhausting.  But today, I found the article below, which pretty much sums up everything I've been meaning to write.

American Politics: Why the Thrill Is Gone - The New Yorker:

It might not be wise for a sometime political journalist to admit this, but the 2016 campaign doesn't seem like fun to me. Watching Marco Rubio try to overcome his past support for immigration reform to win enough conservative votes to become the Mainstream Alternative to the Invisible Primary Leader—who, if there is one, will be a candidate named Bush—doesn't seem like fun. Nor does analyzing whether Chris Christie can become something more than the Factional Favorite of moderate Republicans, or whether Ted Cruz’s impressive early fundraising will make him that rare thing, a Factional Favorite with an outside chance to win. If this is any kind of fun, it’s the kind of fun I associate with reading about seventeenth-century French execution methods, or watching a YouTube video of a fight between a python and an alligator. Fun in small doses, as long as you’re not too close.

Is this a permanent shut down?  Who knows?  In 2012, this blog had a brief burst of life with that year’s presidential election, it is always possible that the same could happen again. 

However, the fact that I wrote just about everything there is to say about 2016 back in March of 2012 (Putin, Clinton, & Bush… Oh my! The current, dynastic period of American history), I see little hope that the upcoming elections are going to be nothing more than another agonizing shit fest of incompetent journalism, blazing lies fueled by bonfires of corporate cash, voters too ill informed, mostly through no fault of their own, to make competent decisions, and everything else that has come to signal the death of any true democratic spirit in America.

Beyond the presidency, things are even worse.

We can call it gridlock in Congress, but that is not what it is.  More and more I see this as being a sign of the increasing irrelevance of our republic’s institutions.  The partisan stonewalling may seem like political maneuvering to those involved, but all it has really done is remove an entire branch of government from any practical leadership role in our country.  

And the Supreme Court?  Man…  At best, hanging on by a thread.  At worst?  Not representing the interests of the Constitution any more, and one bad nomination away from eliminating any debate on the point.

The republic is over, democracy is dead…  Let the oligarchy reign!

UPDATE: 4/24/15

I will still be posting to the Facebook page, but not as often and I'm going to try to keep it to more focused on thoughtful, relevant articles with some depth and less on silly memes that are little more than red meat for the like-minded masses.

Shutdown Blues & The Promise of Reform in 2014

Yes, it’s been quiet here, as I warned it would be after the election.  There may be another post on that later.

Shutdown.  Blah, blah…  All the stuff from the webs.  Been posting a ton of stuff on the Facebook page about this…

But this is where we may see some change in the future.  Maybe things needed to get this bad in D.C. before real change in Congress was possible.

First, a little about how this happened, in my eyes, at least. 

The Tea Partiers who are pushing this are concerned about jobs, this is a job retention strategy.  Their jobs, yes, self-preservation, yes, but that’s what it is.

The districts that elected them want to see some action against Obama and Obama care is about the only real policy / legislation they can find true fault with.  If they don’t do what they are doing, a lot of these radicals will be voted out and replaced with another round of amateurs who will flounder in futility as badly as the current crop of self proclaimed patriots.

Now, yes.  Anger against the GOP over this fiasco may cost some Republicans from more balanced, moderate districts their jobs in 2014, but it won’t be the far, far right minority.

This may be enough to toss the House back to the Dems, which may actually lead to a functioning Congress for a while.

But it doesn’t fix the problem.  The real problem is the procedural rules in both houses.  These arcane and, often, insane rules emerged over decades as one party or the other struggled against the domination of the other.

A silver lining to come out of all of this may be that rules reform could be a real winning campaign issue in 2014.  Usually, when the minority party comes into power, they, for many reasons, leave this stuff. 

However, I think candidate that campaign on reform could really do well in 2014, which may or may not lead to reform actually happening, but let’s cross one bridge at a time here.  For the GOP, this may be a critical strategy.  Yeah, my party broke the country, but I want to fix it.  Depending on how bad things get, this may be the only strategy they have.

If this comes to pass, then this current fiasco may lead to some really positive change down the  road.  And it really will take a disaster to make such change possible.  But maybe it will be worth it, in the long run.

For there to be any hope of reform, though, things are going to have to get a lot worse first.  If this stalemate is resolved soon, and if we end up not defaulting on our debts, then the electorate will have forgotten these events 13 months from now.  Sad but true.

And make no mistake, this is exactly why this is happening right now.

I am not rooting for disaster.  But, if it comes, then this will be my happy thought as I rummage through the dumpsters trying to keep the boys fed. 

President Obama’s Brilliant Strategy No One Seems To Recognize | FreakOutNation

President Obama’s Brilliant Strategy No One Seems To Recognize | FreakOutNation:

 "And there is no way Obama is going to launch this attack once Congress says no. It would be political suicide. Bush may have gotten away with it but America is not going to let it happen again. The fallout would signal the end of any and all effectiveness the Obama administration for the remaining years of his presidency. And history would place him with the likes of war criminals like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Let me repeat this. Obama is not that stupid! 

"So why then does our president appear to be beating the drums of war? The simple answer is he is now regarded as a hawkish leader before the US and the world. And he does so without having to fire a shot. He appears wholeheartedly in favor of a strike and is playing the part well. The hawk stands upon his perch without lifting a talon as Congress now takes any and all responsibility for lack of action on the part of the US. "

'via Blog this'

What do I believe in? The political world according to A. F. Litt

Prelude

On my personal website I have been building a library of my academic papers from my school days.  Tonight, I found one that I thought I would share here.

It was a quick response paper for a cultural anthropology class at Seattle Central Community College some sixteen years ago.  Not my best writing ever, for a class or otherwise, but, clunky writing aside, in many ways I think this little piece sums up my political views better than anything I’ve written before or since.

It does not detail where I am on the left or right spectrum, conservative or liberal.  On that scale, I am far from static and can usually manage to upset people on both sides of that particular divide.  It does, however, explain my opinion on how the American political system operates.

After the massive political failures in Washington D.C. over the last decade, I suspect that more and more people have come around to seeing things from my perspective.  Back in 1996, though, my ideas on government and the media were dismissed as naive by many from both the right and the left.

The popular view was that great, unseen political machinations were pulling the strings of power.  Everything was a borderline conspiracy, or an actual conspiracy. 

After watching both parties shattering like glass against the rocks of their own incompetency the last few years, however, I feel that my views on the system are a bit more mainstream now.  Reading this essay for the first time in about 12 years today, it actually felt fresher than it did in the days of the Clinton Impeachment Trial and the WTO controversies, before the 2000 Election, eight years of George W. Bush, endless wars in the Mid-East, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession, and whatever sort of tragicomic train wreck the last six plus years of Congress will be labeled as by future historians.

Enough from me today, onwards to me from years past…  This is warts and all, copied and pasted from the original Word document.

ANT 202, Fall 1996, Seattle Central Community College

Until recently, I had never read anything by Noam Chomsky, or heard him speak before, but I have run into many people who have and are rather worked up by his ideas. Many of these people, however, tended to have a very paranoid streak in them, and have used Chomksy’s words to confirm their own fears and suspicions about conspiracies and such. They use his ideas as proof that their fears about direct manipulations between corporations, government officials and agencies, the media, and the financial institutions are true. Instead of understanding the subtle and indirect influences these institutions, by nature, have upon one another; they just take these concepts in their bluntest, broadest forms, picturing some sort of wild X-Files type of conspiracy. They believe, in a very literal way, that all politics are nothing but a sham, that the corporations directly control everything, making phone calls and e-mails, ruling directly a puppet government, themselves taking their orders from the global financial institutions. I always ask them where the aliens fit into these schemes, and not all of them realize that I am joking. Because of these people, I have always been a bit weary of Chomsky, but knowing these people’s mind sets, I figured they were just laying their own fears over his ideas, and I’ve always wanted to find out if I was right.

My own view of government and its relationship with the private power structures has always been more of a chaos theory, rather than a conspiracy theory, seeing each individual and group being too caught up in their own special interests, and too busy covering their own asses, to ever work together at a level that such a complex conspiracy would require. There are just too many egos involved. My own view, it turns out, seems very similar to Chomsky’s. So, when listening to the conspiracy theorists talking about the power structures, about the relationships between industry, government, and the media, I’ve never been able to totally disagree. I’ve always ended up with sort of a “Yes, but…” and a “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily go that far” response. I can’t follow them all the way into the conspiracies. For these to actually be occurring, the politicians, CEOs, and journalists would all have to be a lot less self serving, and a hell of a lot smarter, than they ever seemed to be, to me, at least. In 1991, while attending a National Press Club conference in D.C., for example, I had an opportunity to meet briefly with former Rep. Rod Chandler and former Sen. Brock Adams. To be honest, these two were so preoccupied with themselves and with their own personal career goals (Adams, understandable, more so at this point – still vowing to run again, still certain that he could win), that I don’t see them plotting anything with anyone, unless they got to be in charge. When talking about legislation, bills they sponsored, bills where they offered up key support, they never talked with enthusiasm about the laws they were making, or about how they were good for their constituencies, but they were very jazzed up about how powerful they were personally, being able to make that big of a splash on the national issues. Chandler, being groggy from getting back from a fact finding mission to Kuwait, came across as a complete fool and managing to drop in a couple of racist comments, thinking that he’d made a funny, certainly didn’t help his case any. If this guy was ever involved in anything serious, I’d be willing to bet that he’d accidentally expose it. Of course, my paranoid friends all reassure me that these cases were all just acts, that they were ploys to lower our expectations of elected officials, and to lower our defenses.

Still, I feel that these politicians do try to do their best to stand up for and to fight for what they feel needs to be done, but it is no mystery to me how things like aid to the Guatemalan military gets passed by these people, as well. They see the word communist in the early 1980s, and communists are bad. If they don’t vote against the communists, they will endanger their re-election. In these circumstances, why should they even worry if the guerillas are even really communist insurgents or not, why should they waste any effort trying to dig deeper into this issue? It would just be a bother because they already know how they must vote, and so they probably never realize that they were aiding in the suppression of the Guatemalan public, and not in the suppression of the “Evil Empire’s” backing of Soviet-style communism in the Americas.

Likewise, the media. Journalists, like politicians, feel that they and not their possible replacements are the best for their jobs, that they will fight the good fight in a way that they are uniquely qualified for, in a way that their potential successors are not. On top of this, or in place of this, let’s face it: unemployment sucks. In the media, votes count as much towards job security as they do in politics. Here, however, the votes are cast through ratings and circulation figures instead of elections. Using the Guatemalan example again, in the early 80’s the American public was largely uninterested in Central American political struggles, just writing it all off as those damn Cubans working with the Soviets to expand communism closer to the States, and being bored with anything deeper than that. A minute or two here, a few column inches there. The sort of publicity needed to truly educate the public about these freedom fighters, the time and attention needed to explain that these repressed Indians were not really communists, and definitely not backed by any communist nations, would have sent, let’s say, the evening news ratings into the trash. Maybe some journalists knew about the situation down there, and they felt strongly about the need to bring the details to the public’s attention, but often they will sacrifice that story for another one they also feel strongly about, one that the public is more interested in, one with a higher ratings potential. The instinct for self-survival wins again.

This is how I see these two institutions working. It’s not that they are working together, it’s that the very nature of our society forces them both to work in ways that, in this case, serve each other well. Real issues become fuzzy sound bites that end up largely dictating American policies. And it is definitely not Sen. Doe calling up Jack Blowdry, having the network nix the story so Congress can get away with something. Most journalists I’ve met would run screaming to the showers seeking purification at just hearing such a suggestion.

So, getting back to the Chomsky interview, it was very refreshing to hear him say pretty much these same things, confirming my suspicions that he wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, and in fact, hearing him bluntly deny it. My paranoid friends, it seems, weren’t only misunderstanding his message, but completely missing the most important part of it all, that we do live in a free society, and that these institutions don’t have the strength that they would have if such a conspiracy was taking place. (Totalitarianism, anyone?) It’s the capitalistic democracy we live in that creates the appearances of a conspiracy, but it’s also this system that gives the public’s opinions so much strength. It’s the public’s voice, expressed through votes, and sales, and ratings, and such that fuels this system. It’s the fear of a negative opinion that brings out the negative aspects of this system. The idea, as Chomsky put it, that while in a totalitarian system, backed by violence and fear tactics, it doesn’t matter what the public thinks, only what it does, and that the powerful don’t need the support of the public when they decide policy, but in a capitalistic democracy the thoughts of the public are very powerful and potentially dangerous to those in charge while being the hardest part of the system to control, and the support, or ignorance, of the public mandates the policies of the powerful. Therefore, the fear of a negative opinion, of being perceived as another Mondale instead of another Reagan, of selling Pintos instead of Cadillacs, creates a situation where the truth is something to be feared in case it is taken wrong by the consumers. Image become more important than reality, and the truth, or at least the details of the truth, are avoided when possible by anyone selling themselves to the public.  The truth is only investigated and reported by the media if it is exciting, importance or relevance becoming only a secondary consideration.

For example, when the Watergate scandal was being uncovered by the Washington Post, the idea of corruption on that level in the executive branch was big news, but after Nixon and 12 years of Regan/Bush, it’s going to take Clinton being caught at something a lot more clear-cut and scandalous than Whitewater to capture the public’s attention in the way it was by his predecessor’s misdeeds, 23 years ago. [I will interject here in order to point out that this essay was written before Monica Lewinski and the Impeachment] These days, however, O. J. Simpson managed to catch the public’s attention quite nicely in a way that Whitewater hasn’t been able to in post Watergate times.

So Chomsky’s most important message is that if we educate ourselves about how the system works, and why, if we can rekindle our interest in politics and government, we can make our voices even louder, and we will be able to more adroitly wield the power over the system that too many people believe we currently lack. Then we can make the interest of the public more important than just its opinion. It’s hard to inspire interest in the system, though, when 99% of what happens in D.C. does not effect our day-to-day lives, when the practices and attitudes of corporations do not affect us, as long as their products fulfill the use promised, and as long as the news media acts primarily as a form of entertainment, not education. How do the O. J. Simpson trials affect us at all? Even in times of war, the choices are made, or at least ratified, by our pre-elected representatives, and the only news that usually affects the public directly is delivered via mail in the form of selective service notices, notes from friends and loved ones at the front, and letters of consolation. So interest in these institutions is understandably low, but still, it is very necessary. Just because we are not directly affected by them most of the time doesn’t mean that we can’t be.

We need to be vigilant for the times when our lives could be very much changed by these institutions. It is important for the public to remain vigilant, and the power we have over the system needs to be maintained, or it could be lost, whittled away slowly with the public not even realizing that it has been lost, or that they ever even had it at all.

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Very Cool: Response from Rep. Earl Blumenauer on SOPA

Dear Mr. Litt:

Thank you for contacting me in support of Internet freedom.  My apologies if you tried to access my website on Wednesday January 18, 2012--it was blacked out in solidarity with Oregonians like you who believe in Internet freedom and entrepreneurship.

I could not agree with you more regarding this flawed legislation.  The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is intended to protect the intellectual property of United States businesses by shutting down websites that traffick pirated material. There is widespread agreement that online piracy and the problem of "rogue" foreign sites can threaten the economic security of U.S. businesses. There is also widespread agreement that the Internet has revolutionized the way the world learns, interacts, and does business. 

Well intentioned though it may be, I have very strong concerns that SOPA would infringe on Internet freedom, stifle the innovation critical for Oregon's startup culture, and threaten Internet security.

Congress must be careful to protect intellectual property rights without jeopardizing what has made the Internet one of the biggest drivers of the economy. SOPA does not strike this balance and needs to go back to the drawing board. 

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me. I will continue working to protect the integrity of the Internet.

Sincerely,

Earl Blumenauer
Member of Congress

 

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Protest SOPA… Do it for the jet skis!

Note: Cross posted from Rubble.

Permalink

 

TheOatmeal.com blacked out in protest of SOPA / PIPA - The Oatmeal:

For the next 24 hours I am blacking out TheOatmeal.com in protest of SOPA and PIPA. If one of these bills were to pass, this page is what many sites on the internet would look like.

As someone who creates content for the web, earns a living from it, and has had his content pirated, I do feel that we need better legislation against online piracy.

I do not, however, think that SOPA or PIPA are the legislation we need.

Want to help in the fight against SOPA / PIPA? First, go learn about the bills. After that go contact your elected officials. Wikipedia has a handy-dandy page set up which allows you to locate your state representative.

Hugs and jet skis,
-The Oatmeal

P.S. Please pirate the shit out of this animated GIF.

 

 

Done.

Now go check out the link below… 

 

A dysfunctional system goes Super… And fails.

From 2011-11 (Nov)

On Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources this morning, Kurtz was asking if the media was over-hyping and over-blowing the consequences of the “Super Committee's” failure to come up with a debt reduction plan.

He asks if all these “terrible things” that may happen as a result of this failure are “just media hype?”

In these teasers for the segment, it seemed to me that he was missing the real punch line here, but after a weak panel discussion on the topic, he did get to the point I feel needs to be made.

The real story here is how the failure of the “Super Committee,” which was set up to actually succeed without a lot of the procedural chains that bind the rest of Congress, brings into sharp relief the fact that, in Kurtz’s words, “nobody seems to be able to get anything done in Washington.”

He points out how this failure “highlight[s] the utter dysfunction of Washington.”

To me, this is the real story here.  Of course Congress will find a way to avert the “disaster” of across the board budget cuts, of course tax codes will remain ridiculously full of loop holes for the richest individuals and corporations…  Of course the traditional and non-traditional media will make a lot of noise about small political maneuvers that distract everyone from the real issues and problems facing our country and binding our system…

Nothing much will change.  Few real problems will be solved (or even mentioned), problems manufactured for use as political weapons will be howled about…

And nothing much will change.

This is the story that is not being covered. 

I saw this quote earlier, from Andrew Sullivan, explaining the Occupation and Tea Party movements… 

"The theme that connects them all is disenfranchisement, the sense that the world is shifting deeply and inexorably beyond our ability to control it through our democratic institutions. You can call this many things, but a “democratic deficit” gets to the nub of it. Democracy means rule by the people—however rough-edged, however blunted by representative government, however imperfect. But everywhere, the people feel as if someone else is now ruling them—and see no way to regain control."

The system has become nearly impossible to change.  The far right’s reaction is to just break it.  The left wallows in ineptitude.  The center rolls its eyes and simmers in a weak broth of futility.

For awhile, I’ve been thinking that if I ever took a sign to an Occupation event, it would be this:

The Status-Quo is

working for someone.

Is it working for you?

What is the solution?  Well, there are no big universal fixes.  But this is the conversation that we need to be having.

Finally, I loved this quote from Kurtz this morning: “miillions and millions unemployed and that is becoming an old story and that does bother me.”

Exactly.  It should bother everyone.

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• Democracy In Distress: Poorest poor in US hits new record: 1 in 15 people - Yahoo! News
• Democracy In Distress: WTF!?!?! Tea Party Nation asks businesses to stop hiring as expression of tea party solidarity
• Democracy In Distress: Ratio of Pay Chart - CEO : Average Worker

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Republican Job Creation • Keeping Millions Unemployed To Put One Man Out of Work

Republican Job Creation • Keeping Millions Unemployed To Put One Man Out of Work:

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SPIN METER: Obama disconnects rhetoric, reality - AP

The Edwardsville Intelligencer : AP General News:

Oct 10, 6:24 AM EDT SPIN METER: Obama disconnects rhetoric, reality By ERICA WERNER Associated Press

The disconnect between what Obama says about his jobs bill and what stands as the political reality flow from his broader aim: to rally the public behind his cause and get Congress to act, or, if not, to pin blame on Republicans.

He is waging a campaign, one in which nuance and context and competing responses don't always fit in if they don't help make the case.

For example, when Obama says his jobs plan is made up of ideas that have historically had bipartisan support, he stops the point there. Not mentioned is that Republicans have never embraced the tax increases that he is proposing to cover the cost of his plan.

Likewise, from city to city, Obama is demanding that Congress act (he means Republicans) while it has been clear for weeks that the GOP will not support all of his bill, to say the least. Individual elements of it may well pass, such as Obama's proposal to extend and expand a payroll tax cut. But Republicans strongly oppose the president's proposed new spending and his plan to raise taxes on millionaires to pay for the package.

The fight over the legislative proposal has become something much bigger: a critical test of the president's powers of persuading the public heading into the 2012 presidential campaign, and of Republicans' ability to deny him a win and reap victory for themselves.

"He knows it's not going to pass. He's betting that voters won't pick up on it, or even if they do they will blame Congress and he can run against the `do-nothing Congress,'" said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development.

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Updated because Pelosi made a good point... Nancy Pelosi & Democrats Seek to Own 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement

Not quite sure that "help" from Congressional Democrats is really what anyone needs...

Democrats Seek to Own 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement - Yahoo! News: "Occupation can lead to ownership, whether or not you want it.

The spread of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement was met with initial hesitation in both the Democratic and Republican parties. That might be an appropriate response to any protests that aim themselves squarely at the establishment, particularly those with goals that are diverse and diffuse as the current protesters' are.

But a consensus is emerging among Democrats that the "Occupy" movement is worth tapping into, even helping along and joining with in some instances.

"I support the message to the establishment," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on ABC's "This Week.""

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UPDATE:

This is cool...

 Daily Kos: Nancy Pelosi smacks Eric Cantor over Occupy Wall Street: "House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is concerned about what he calls the "growing mobs" of Occupy Wall Street protesters. In response, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi quips that Cantor didn't seem to mind when tea party protesters were literally spitting on members of Congress:" 'via Blog this'

Can this government be fixed? Three steps that might help – USATODAY.com

Can this government be fixed? Three steps that might help – USATODAY.com: "three "wave" elections in a row shifted political power but failed to fundamentally change the way Washington works, or doesn't work. They have some ideas for steps that could help.

Perhaps the most significant would change the way congressional lines are drawn, making more districts competitive and increasing the odds that centrist candidates could prevail. Revising the rules for Senate filibusters could prevent a few senators from routinely blocking action supported by a majority. And changing the congressional calendar could encourage legislators to build personal relationships with colleagues from the other party."

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Economists Like the Jobs Act a Lot More Than Congress - Yahoo! News

Economists Like the Jobs Act a Lot More Than Congress - Yahoo! News: "The news service surveyed economists and found them to be overwhelmingly positive on the jobs act, predicting anywhere from a 1.3 percent to a 2 percent boost to the nation's economy if it passes, preventing a recession in 2012. As the Washington Times' Steve Benen points out, "support for the American Jobs Act continues to be much stronger among economists than members of Congress." It gets even better for the White House: The economists Bloomberg surveyed said Republican plans would actually push the economy back toward recession. "

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Obama turns fire on Republicans - Yahoo! News

The President seems to be coming to the understanding that you can't win a baseball game when the other team is playing football. Or that you can't win a knife fight when you show up armed only with a 14 point agenda for negotiation based on mutual concessions made by both sides and a sincere desire for both sides to act with maturity and common sense.

Obama turns fire on Republicans - Yahoo! News: "The deficit-reduction speech President Obama delivered from the Rose Garden on Monday underscores the sharp strategic pivot he and his administration have made in the wake of the debt ceiling negotiations.

Call it lessons learned the hard way, or the necessary readjustment by a politician, but the Obama who spoke on Monday was in a far different place politically and stylistically from the president who tried to pull off a grand bargain with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in July and August.

Obama is a politician whose first instincts always have been to try to find ways to entice, cajole, reason with or otherwise produce cross-party consensus. On Monday, he continued a transition toward greater partisanship that began with his speech to a joint session of Congress two weeks ago.

Rarely has this president been as blunt in his challenges to the other party as he was on Monday. Rarely has he been so willing to draw lines in the sand. Rarely has he waved the threat of a veto with such emphasis.

Obama has gone from a president who talked openly about his willingness to rile his own party by making concessions on entitlements to get a deal with the Republicans to a politician determined to reconnect with his base as the two parties head into a new round of negotiations and an election campaign in which the stakes could not be higher."

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An interesting look at Michele Bachmann

The Michele Bachmann show should be an interesting one through the primaries. I expect she will attack her competition ferociously, but I also suspect that she'll draw as much fire as she dishes out. She probably will not get the nomination in the end, but she may take a few people out with her. Just my hunch. This article provides a pretty decent look at where she stands at the moment as the festivities get rolling.

Can Michele Bachmann broaden her appeal beyond the Tea Party? - Yahoo! News

From the article:

Bachmann, in other words, can be flaky and prone to flights of wild assertion. But usually in ways that endear her to conservatives and drive liberals nuts. The three-term Minnesota congresswoman is a cheerful culture warrior, a pro-life mother of five (plus 23 foster children) whose upbeat lack of concern for political verities -- she delivered her own response to the president's State of the Union address -- has made her a Tea Party favorite. Think Sarah Palin, without the aggrieved victimization.


...


[In the recent debate,] Rather than coming across as a fringe figure, she looked as if she belonged on stage with the other candidates, outshining most of them and comporting herself in a way that seemed plausibly presidential. That's been the challenge that most other Tea Party candidates have failed. Other heroes of the movement, from Sharron Angle to Christine O'Donnell to Rand Paul, have often frightened ordinary voters. But on Monday at least, Bachmann did not.


...


But there is likely to be a limit to how far she can go. For all the attention she draws to herself, she hasn't actually done much in Congress. "She runs on what's wrong, not on what she's accomplished,'' said Jacobs. And several people who have worked for her, including her former chief of staff, have stated that she has no business running for president.


...


Bachmann's history of slip-ups and strange claims makes it a little hard to believe that the woman who shone in the debate is here for the duration. But Republicans are yearning to be excited. They'll make allowances. If Bachmann can keep it together a little longer, this may not be the last surprise she offers.